Putting Carmona’s Place-shaping Continuum to use in research practice

This paper critically considers Carmona's Place-shaping Continuum in the context of Cairns in tropical north Australia to explore the model's applicability across different cultures and contexts. Drawing from context analysis and interviews with knowing and unknowing urban designers, this research uses a critical policy lens to consider how the process of designing the city for use might apply in Cairns, a regional, tropical city quite different from where Carmona's model of urban design was developed from. Results indicate that in Cairns, the geopolitical, economic, environmental and cultural contexts continue to influence how things are done in the city; there is little to distinguish knowing and unknowing urban designers from one another; and that whilst urban designers consider themselves to have a role in the urban design process, few assume ownership of the process. The paper concludes that Carmona's context elements of place, polity and power are fundamentally important in the application of the model in research practice.